2009 January | EntBlog

Planet 51 Trailer

January 16, 2009 @ 11:26 | In Internet, Personal, Videogames | 2 Comments |

Since the first day I saw content from Planet51 I knew it was going to rock. I am emotionally attached to this movie because I worked in the Videogame for a few months and because I have worked in the past with several member of the technical team that is behind the movie. I know first hand they are very talented people.

And finally, the trailer is now live: Planet51 trailer!

Congratulations to all the team. All the best for them.

Stripping comments from Shader bytecodes

January 15, 2009 @ 21:37 | In CodeGems, Programming | 1 Comment |

In DirectX, when compiling a shader with D3DXCompileShader() a buffer containing the shader bytecodes is received. Apart from the bytecodes, extra content like debug and symbol table information is embedded. That extra information is added in form of comments that probably can be eliminated because you are already processing it at compile-time and it is not needed at run-time when loading the shader.

If you can do without that information the following code will help you to save a few bytes, even halving the size of the byte-code in the best cases.

Although not documented in the DirectX SDK, this CodeGem is not an undocumented hack. The Direct3D shader code format is documented in the MSDN, so it probaly won’t change in future revision of DirectX v9.0 (if there is going to be any more…)

D3DPtr<ID3DXBuffer> StripComments(const D3DPtr<ID3DXBuffer>& code)
{
    // Calculates the new size (without comments)
    int* codeData = static_cast<int*>(code->GetBufferPointer());
    unsigned int sizeInWords = code->GetBufferSize() / 4;
    unsigned int strippedSizeInWords = sizeInWords;
 
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < sizeInWords; i++)
    {
        if ((codeData[i] & 0xffff) == D3DSIO_COMMENT)
        {
            int commentSize = codeData[i] >> 16;
            strippedSizeInWords -= 1 + commentSize;
            i += commentSize;
        }
    }
 
    // Creates a new buffer with the original code but omitting the comments
    D3DPtr<ID3DXBuffer> strippedCode;
    V(D3DXCreateBuffer(strippedSizeInWords * 4, strippedCode.GetPtrForInit()));
 
    int* strippedCodeData = static_cast<int*>(strippedCode->GetBufferPointer());
    size_t offset = 0;
 
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < sizeInWords; i++)
    {
        if ((codeData[i] & 0xffff) == D3DSIO_COMMENT)
        {
            int commentSize = codeData[i] >> 16;
            i += commentSize;
        }
        else
        {
            strippedCodeData[offset++] = codeData[i];
        }
    }
 
    return strippedCode;
}